Crux is the second novel of the Nexus series (I wrote about the first book here), this comment contains spoilers about the first book, so you are warned.

The story begins where Nexus ended: Kade and Feng are running away and in the meanwhile Kade is developing Nexus 6, the OS evolution that do not allow coercive use, Sam, with a different name and appearance, is trying to reach the Thai house with the Nexus born orphan children, in China Ling wants to reach her mother, kept in a Government controlled research centre and in the USA the ERD wants to get the Nexus secrets from Kade ex colleagues, now prisoners.

Since the first book was so full of new ideas and infodump and action were balanced, I hoped something similar in the following book, but I got disappointed. Crux is longer than Nexus, but it can be easily made shorter by cutting away all the characters reflections / personal dilemmas – always the same.

A pity, since it contains some interesting ideas like the Post-human Liberation Fron, the fate of the autistic child kidnapped by ERD, the aims of Shiva Prasad, and some engaging scenes, like the one with Ilya Alexander; the goods are however too much diluted and the book loses then incisiveness.

I’m waiting for the third and last novel, hoping it will be similar to the first book of the series.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

Ramez Naam, before being a writer, is a professional technologist who contributed also to the development of some famous Microsoft suites. His scientific interests brought him to write the essay More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, 2005 H.G. Wells Award winner.

And it’s from these premises that the Nexus series is born (now the books have also some fascinating covers, good work Angry Robots).